Thursday, January 17, 2008

Once Upon A Time,in a land not so far away, there lived a young girl who wanted to have a baby. Everything in her life was in order and just as it should be. She graduated from college, got married and set up a nice home that was just perfect for children. The young girl was happy, her prince was happy and then the young girl became pregnant. Eager to have a technological confirmation to her very non-technological pregnancy (because was was the thing to do, was it not?) she and her prince made their way to the closest good doctor's office. After being relentlessly poked and prodded, plundered and pricked, the doctor was sufficiently pleased that the girl was not defective and he granted the young girl her heart's desire, "yes, my dear, you are indeed pregnant."

As the weeks passed it became dreadfully apparent to the young girl and her prince that all was not well in YouShouldBeGratefulLand. No type of nourishment seemed to sit well on her stomach and the once vibrant, healthy young girl had become something of a haggard waif. She had lost, by the end, nearly a quarter of the girl she had been just months earlier. Often it was all she cold do to crawl out of bed and wearily rest her head on the cool commode from sunrise to sunset. The girl and the prince pleaded with the good doctor to tell them what might be the matter and to offer a cure but their pleas fell silent before him. The only advice offered was, "you should be grateful to have the privilege of carrying a baby at all, my dear little girl. Here are some crackers that should do the trick. Chin up now and run along home."

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"But now and then, you can make people care, make people notice that something ain't quite right, and nudge them gently, with the words, to get off their ass and fix it" from Rick Bragg's memoirAll Over but the Shoutin'